To the question of is HomePod worth the premium over a product like the Sonos One that is $199 and has Amazon’s Alexa, I’d say absolutely if you truly care and are picky about sound quality and/or you are deeply embedded in Apple’s ecosystem. For the time being, if you want a great sounding speaker, with multi-room capability, a bit more full-featured assistant in Amazon’s Alexa (with Google Assistant support coming) then the Sonos Play One is a great option and great value for the money. In fact, the more I compared the Sonos Play One to the HomePod, while HomePod did sound better, I was still impressed with the sound quality of the Sonos comparatively for the price.

Ben and I have come to the same conclusion, though I am going to upgrade in the near future. I think HomePod is a big step up.